Preface<br >Deserts have made fools of the wisest people.<br > Alexis de Tocqueville， fol~ instance， was not easy to trick. In<br >Democracy in America， Tocqu~ville provided the most penetrating<br >analysis of United States culture and politics. Penetration aside，<br >Tocqueville fell for the Great American Desert.<br > Tocqueville did not visit the region， but he described it with<br >certainty. To the west of the Mississippi River， Tocqueville said， "the<br >land becomes more and more uneven and sterile." The further one<br >traveled from the river， "the sparser the vegetation and the poorer<br >becomes the soil， and everything wilts or dies." If there was ever an<br >uninviting landscape， this was it: "the soil is punctured in a thousand<br >places by primitive rocks sticking out here and there like the bones<br >of a skeleton when sinews and flesh have perished. l<br > In America-according-to-Tocqueville， the earth west of the Mis-<br >sissippi was a dry， exposed corpse. The image was， we all know now，<br >a disservice to the Great Plains. Tocqueville had fallen for the reports<br >of explorers like Stephen Long， and for the perspective by which<br >the moderately arid and treeless Plains registered as full-scale deserts.<br >Take the habits of life in a humid climate and a preoccupation with<br >agrarian values; apply those habits and values to the dry grasslands<br > in the middle of the continent; and the myth of the Great American<br > Desert was a predictable product.2<br > This was， in its time， a powerful myth， powerful enough to trick<br >/<br ><br >